Claravox Centennial- known issues, bugs and quirks

cheesemaster, if you need or want any EE assistance with your Cvox, please let me know.  I'm in Boonton and email is in my TW profile.  Always very happy to meet and greet with fellow Theremin enthusiasts!

Moog should be paying Dewster as a support consultant by now…

"Moog should be paying Dewster as a support consultant by now…"  - bendra

My wife's quip about volunteering: "if this were a paying job I'd quit!" ;-)

OT: Ben, you've inspired me to grow out my beard!  It's about ship's Captain's length now.  I should learn to play some sea shantys...

Beard is one of the few pleasures which improves with age. I say go for it

Dewster- thanks for the generous offer. We'll see how far I get with Moog on this. I'm new to the forum here but very appreciative of the very supportive community that I've found.

Hi, quick update here... I emailed Moog about my volume issue and they offered to pay for shipping back for calibration or they said I was welcome to try it myself. Of course I didn't want to ship it back so I gave it a go with the plastic tool. The tech said they do it with an oscilloscope and DVM, but with trial and error I should be able to fine tune it to my liking. He was right, it was pretty quick and easy. I went back and fourth a few times, but the final adjustment was less than a full turn. You can go a couple turns and still go back to find your starting point. YMMV, of course, so proceed at your own risk, but I now have a functioning instrument in both Mod and Trad modes. Seems they could save themselves some hassle if they had a paragraph or two about this in the manual.

That said, the volume response in Modern mode feels very similar to my Etherwave Plus, while the Trad mode is different. The curve is different in that I have to get much closer to it to go completely silent. I think it's more linear. It's going to take some getting used to but it feels like a change that might make me a better player in the end anyway, if only because I now need to be more aware of what that hand is doing.

Glad it turned out well for you cheesemaster!  Did Moog give you specific instructions, or did they just say to have at it with the tool?  I think this kind of info should be in the manual too.

"That said, the volume response in Modern mode feels very similar to my Etherwave Plus, while the Trad mode is different. The curve is different in that I have to get much closer to it to go completely silent. I think it's more linear. It's going to take some getting used to but it feels like a change that might make me a better player in the end anyway, if only because I now need to be more aware of what that hand is doing."  - cheesemaster

Interesting.  I think a good volume response is non-linear in a specific way - two linear sections with different gains, the transition around -10dB of full volume, giving roughly equal hand movement distance to go from silent (-48dB or so) to -10dB, and from -10dB to 0dB.  I don't like thinking about what my left hand is doing as I'm too busy thinking about what my right hand is doing.  Many players seem to have an odd left hand pose and accompanying gestures, which makes me think they developed them unconsciously.

"Beard is one of the few pleasures which improves with age. I say go for it"  - Bendra

True enough!  Before it started turning gray (I'm an old) it came out straight like a paint brush.  Now it's all wiry and fluffy and long enough to comb (cue the childhood joke: Mommy, Mommy! What's a werewolf? Shut up and comb your face!) - but the salt an pepper makes me look like an ewok on zoom.

Glad it turned out well for you cheesemaster!  Did Moog give you specific instructions, or did they just say to have at it with the tool? 

He basically suggested I use trial and error, starting in quarter turns each way until I hear a difference and then fine-tune as it approaches the desired response. I'm satisfied with it now, but I can see wanting to tweak it in the future. There's a balance affecting the difference between Trad and Modern modes. As others have said, it seems the Modern is significantly louder, on the order of 20dB, but that's also sort of a product of the volume tuning, the different curves, the calibration routine, and where I like my hands to be. It's still such a new thing and I'm not done getting used to it yet.

Maybe sending it back to Moog would be better, but I'd prefer to struggle with something that might be sub-optimal until I reach an understanding or detente, rather than hand it off to the experts to have it returned in perfect order. I want to understand it.

I've also had a couple cases of no sound after moving it. I reinserted the volume antenna and fiddled a bit and it returned. So I'll probably be sanding the end of that too. 

While I'm at it... yesterday I was getting a bit of a warbly sound in Trad mode. Tried a bunch of things and, long story short, I finally noticed that the Pitch Response value in the app was flickering between two values. I gave the knob a tweak and the flickering and warbling went away. So there you go, a little sampling noise weirdness on that controller. Shouldn't happen but did.

"He basically suggested I use trial and error, starting in quarter turns each way until I hear a difference and then fine-tune as it approaches the desired response."  - cheesemaster

Pretty vague instructions, kinda like the joke on how to sculpt a marble statue (it's easy: just chip away all the stone that doesn't look like David).  Did they hint at all as to how they use a scope & DMM to do the factory calibration?

"There's a balance affecting the difference between Trad and Modern modes."

I've wondered about this, how unintentionally interactive the field adjustments and calibrations for the two modes might be.  How often do you find yourself adjusting the null knobs, doing the modern mode calibrations, etc.?  After adjusting the null knobs in modern mode, do you have to do the other modern mode calibrations to get it straight?

"While I'm at it... yesterday I was getting a bit of a warbly sound in Trad mode. Tried a bunch of things and, long story short, I finally noticed that the Pitch Response value in the app was flickering between two values. I gave the knob a tweak and the flickering and warbling went away. So there you go, a little sampling noise weirdness on that controller. Shouldn't happen but did."

That's a software issue (I would say bug): they should put some hysteresis on the pot values if they're going to use them as encoders.  This might explain the weird pitch stepping in a video someone posted (but since removed).  I have no direct experience with doing this as IMO pots generally shouldn't be pressed into service as encoders because they introduce a confusing multi-stateholder type situation when you have presets.  As a single state holder they're great (e.g. soldering iron temperature).

After getting mine back from Moog I still notice that in traditional mode I cannot completely silence the sound output.  With my hand in the volume loop I can still hear a faint tone.  Is it possible running this tuning exercise might correct this?